IN THE SHADOW OF THE HIMALAYAS (Mapin, $40.95) by Kurt Meyer and Pamela Deuel Meyer reproduces a fascinating photographic record of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim kept by John Claude White between the years 1883 and 1908. White was a civil engineer by education, a colonial administrator by profession and a photographer by vocation. He worked as an engineer at the British residency in Kathmandu and spent two decades in Gangtok as the first British political officer overseeing British interests in Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet. This is a photograph of the Shigatse Abbot (right) in his tent at Khampa dzong. The abbot had been sent by the Panchen Lama to meet the British mission in the camp at Khampa dzong. The abbot's tent is a black yak-hair enclosure with a small canopy, protected from the piercing winds of the high Tibetan plain only by a canvas wall.